


The Laugh of Recognition

by crankyoldman



Category: Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, Implied Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 11:39:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10555682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crankyoldman/pseuds/crankyoldman
Summary: Veld likes to tell stories. It's just a lot harder when your grown daughter has some very valid idealogical differences.





	

"It's completely bullshit if someone comes to you and says they're a monster. Anyone that is willing to adopt that title _wants_ it. Real monsters simply are, there's no fanfare or dramatic declarations."

"What does that make you?"

"A monster contemporary. I don't even have the excuse of misunderstanding what it's like to be human."

\---

There was something more than a little disturbing seeing his daughter after so many years as an adult. While he'd never subscribed to the _tabula rasa_ style of parenting, where a child was merely the imprint of their parents he didn't quite expect to see so much of himself in her.

Except he was so much angrier at her age.

"You can stop staring any time, you know."

The ungraceful bluntness, that she got from her mother. Veld was blunt at times, but usually people didn't notice he was being blunt. No wonder he'd been more suited to espionage, while Felicia--Elfe, he supposed she preferred--was more suited to revolution. 

"I'm re-aligning my image of you. Most fathers get to see the growing up process happen more gradually."

It had been a hard recovery; normal training with Materia was rough enough, someone's back-alley science experiment in grafting Materia into his only child was Hell. That she could survive such a thing and only give off a sense of tired resentment was extraordinary in the least.

"I can do that without staring. You mind explaining how my once heroic father is actually a corporate coward?"

Well, maybe he wasn't that much angrier at her age.

"It's very easy to be a hero to a child."

She snorted and tried valiantly not to pick at one of the dressings still on her arm. "I'm not sure if it would have been better if you were dead or alive. The truth would have come out eventually either way."

"Truth is cold and unfeeling if presented as merely facts. You can hear it from the horse's mouth at least." He paused to take a sip of water, his throat wasn't particularly prepared for this conversation and revolted by being far too dry. "Besides, I was never lucky enough to die when the situation presented itself."

She furrowed her brows. "Are you saying Mom was _lucky_?"

Poor choice of wording. "I'm merely saying that justice dictates that some are alive to answer for their crimes."

While she didn't seem like she entirely got the concept, Elfe certainly seemed like she was willing to entertain the notion. Veld had made a living of deaths by a thousand cuts, whereas she went straight for the jugular. Common ground between them could only be found in the volume of blood spilled.

"Why commit the crimes in the first place, Veld?"

So, she wasn't going to call him Father yet. That was fair.

"I could ask the same of you?"

"I committed crimes against unjust laws and actions. You committed crimes against humanity. There's a difference. A big difference."

He _envied_ her certainty. It wasn't Elfe's relative youth that provided that, it was something that he'd never had the opportunity to have. Veld had no idea how, outside of some kind of damned providence, how someone could have that pure a reaction to injustice. Or could _have_ a sense of justice in a world like theirs. It was something that was neither his, nor Laura's; it was purely Elfe's.

"I didn't have a choice to start down this way. It's very hard to deviate once you go down a certain way."

"Explain."

\---

There were only a few ways to make a living in Midgar; the advent of Mako energy had taken away most of the industrial jobs, and the Plate had removed most of the Slums ability to even have something as simple as a garden. It wasn't completely an exaggeration to say that someone was either serving or being served with very little in between. “Business” seemed a nebulous cover for those that siphoned what seemed the very life force of those that inhabited the service sphere.

Still; most people wanted in on the business side of things if you asked them.

Veld had no illusions about the small towns or island nations outside the city. Sandy, an actress at the theater where he frequently cleaned up body fluids, had always lived in Midgar. Her big brown eyes dreamily widened when he told her stories about his fisherman father and brothers--edited of course for just the right amount of sentiment.

The hustle was at least possible in Midgar.

Living on the coast after the skirmishes that couldn't even be classified as wars had given him the impetus to go and make his fortune the modern way. Sandy wouldn't have been impressed knowing that provincial life was dying as industrial and technological progress kept making new wounds, waiting for it to bleed out in the next decade or so.

Plus, he was nineteen. He wasn't going to get caught the same way his father had, in a trade that couldn't pivot, couldn't recover from something upstream killing the fish and making them toxic. Veld was so much smarter than his brothers too, who kept trying the same old thing, had seemed shocked when those xenophobic Wutains refused their attempts at citizenship. Turned up their noses when he said he was going to make it in Midgar.

At least this city didn't given a shit if you could trace your ancestry back to the right asshole in the Empire. An Empire in name only, really.

Even as the night janitor in the cesspool of the entertainment district below Plate he could see glittering potential. People knew how to be beautiful here, not just useful. And if he wore the right suit and put on the right cologne no one noticed that he’d had to take a cold shower after cleaning toilets. That he’d walked a mile on foot because he had missed the last train.

\---

“That's really shallow, you know.”

He had to wonder if it was the penance of all absent parents to hear their insecurities spat back at them in their children’s voices.

“I never ascribed any morally superiority to my viewpoint then. Merely providing context.”

“You wanted a shortcut.”

“I wanted life to mean more than just _existing_ Will you let me continue before you jump to conclusions?”

They had enough blood between them to at least be reaching for that far off common ground. For every lie he had lived he was going to at least be honest now. Maybe age had brought back the gnawing fears of his youth that he was somehow unnecessary in the world. 

No matter. Things had to be set to truth.

\---

There were a number of opportunities if you were young and attractive and broke. 

Veld had found a number of them required some loosening of the moral fiber. Determination required that he stop wondering what his mother would say if she caught him hanging around some of the people that were his contemporaries.

He wasn't tempted by much; one of the secrets that lurked out in the country was that the vices were the same as the city. They just liked to pretend they didn't exist, that there was never despair in the great nothingness. He preferred the gentler types of anesthetizing where he could control someone else’s perceptions rather than his own. A single glass of whiskey or bourbon could last Veld a whole night if he played it just right.

He went for two if someone else was buying.

As long as Veld maintained while not exactly complete sobriety at least a polite distance from the harder things he wasn't likely to run afoul of any pimps or flesh-dealers. 

Janitors were invisible for the most part and employers always worked hard to ensure that their hours were when fancy clientele weren’t likely to see them. It made it easier for him to take a shower in the leaky room he rented with only five minutes of hot water and put on a suit and become a different person for a while.

A person that certain kinds of rich girls really liked to take to dinner to piss their dads off.

It wasn’t _really_ deception if they were using him. And he’d worked with Sandy on his accent to the point where some of them might even believe he’d buy them dinner if it wasn’t much more satisfying to stick their fathers with the bill. 

Unfortunately, the returns had been diminishing. There were only so many daughters of rich Midgar elites that frequented his usual haunts, and he needed to think more long term. The initial hint of exoticism he had that only the blandest of rich girls thought was special had started to wear thin with the latest fad of dating the estate gardener.

If he were inclined--which he wasn’t--there were plenty of rich young men who had tried to casually make his acquaintance. But he found the idea of giving a false sense of hope to already vulnerable young men to be distasteful at best. And he’d heard enough about the older men to not even flirt with that idea; it was one of the reasons he'd never fully gotten into the trade.

Older women, however, would be under absolutely no illusions and far less likely to get him into more shit than he could handle. 

“Nice shoes.”

He could stand at about 5’7” with posture and some creative footwear handling; he was much closer to barely 5’5” in bare feet. He usually didn't draw attention to that fact, so he had to wonder who would notice.

“Pardon,” he looked her over and ascertained that she might find it flattery if he guessed her younger, “miss. I don't think we’ve met.”

He struggled a bit to remember his catalog of potential _companions_ and couldn't see her face in it. But she certainly fit the type to a T; her clothes and purse didn't only say money they said class. Plus she was tall for a woman, which meant he had a 50/50 shot of being just her type. She carried herself too confidently to be the type that needed a man to be tall at least.

“Michelle. And you’re Veld, right? Sandy had a lot of positive things to say about you.”

In all his plans and personal petty machinations he’d forgotten that there was some kind of legal comeuppance for those that made their living outside established organizations. Veld quickly looked around for both an exit or someone else who looked like they usually wore a uniform.

Before he could bolt, Michelle firmly but not threateningly grabbed his shoulder. “No need to run. I'm here to offer you a job, kid.”

“Listen lady, I'm not sure what you're trying to sell me, but I'm not interested.”

When she smiled it wasn't warm or friendly, more a reminder that he was severely outclassed in this situation.

“I've been trying to get us an actor for some time now, but turns out most of the theater crowd are more ego than anything. But you… you take misdirection to a level that I don't tend to see outside of middle aged politicians. I think given the right training you'd be excellent for my department.”

“What kind of training?”

“Weapons, mostly. And some basic deescalation techniques so you don't run up our weapons budget.”

Weapons? Veld had gotten into his share of fights, sure, but he'd made due with basic things in his environment and learning to run really fast if it came down to it. He wasn't sure if this offer was a red flag or a golden ticket.

“Don't make that face. We have health insurance and hazard pay.”

He wasn't even going to pretend like he wasn't more than a little desperate for some basic comforts. Hell, he'd probably kill someone for a place with more than two minutes of hot water.

“And what exactly am I being hired for?”

“The execs have landed on the name Department of Administrative Research. It's a lot of nothing that means sometimes we need to shoot people but a lot of the time we’d rather talk people out of information they may or may not have. Shooting can be more easily taught than lying and I think you're natural born.”

He wasn't sure if being positively referred to as a liar was something a normal person felt pride in. But Veld had spent every cell in his being trying oh so hard not to be like _them_ be different than anyone else.

“Hazard pay, you say?”

“Pension and everything if you last five years.”

\---

Elfe seemed to be chewing on the story, but not swallowing.

“So you joined an organization that committed human rights violations because you couldn't be a fisherman and were too impatient to get a real job?”

“I don't see you have a so-called ‘real job’ yourself.”

“I was for all intents and purposes an orphan who didn't exactly choose my circumstances. You want to compare?”

Veld shook his head. “I don't doubt your suffering. Had I known…”

“How'd you become my dad? Was that all lying too, playing at something?”

He had been prepping for this, the uncomfortable truth tha gnawed at their interactions. Veld supposed it was a cosmic penance to have a daughter through early childhood and then not see her again until she was a world weary young woman, his heroic shine worn off before he'd walked back in the room. 

Veld had sworn to himself he wasn't going to be the type that sought redemption via progeny.

“I lied to myself to be with your mother, and found out the truth the moment you were born. If there was ever a thing I did right, it was to allow you into the world.”

He might not be her hero anymore, but he was her father. And if her face was any indication things might not be better but they could at least be alright.

“I can't accept everything, but I can accept that. You could have opened with that you know.”

“You wouldn't have believed me.”

Her rueful grin was magnitudes. Veld was never going to regret the choice he made at her age, to survive in a level of comfort in exchange for just a little moral high ground. But he wasn't going to fault the conflicted young man who accidentally sired a hero. He could be proud of at least one thing he'd stumbled into.

“You’ll have to keep telling me more truths, then. Maybe I’ll change my mind.”


End file.
